Firstly, as you can see, I love bright pink, blue, and purple colour mixes. Then, I decided to create little stories with the shapes I wanted to cut out. I used to live in Vienna and Singapore, and now I live in London. Let me put the short stories in words.

Vienna
I lived in Vienna for four years. I moved there to study Theatre, Film, and Media. I really loved my time in Vienna. The city is very cultural with its many theatres, museums, and festivals. I couldn’t have made a better choice for my studies. I met some amazing people there with whom I’m still friends even if we moved away. Vienna is chilled out; in the summer you spend most of the time outside. I highly recommend Museumsquartier. You can bring your own beverages and just relax on the iconic art sofas after you’ve visited one of the surrounding museums. I remember at the beginning of my studies I walked to university every day, listening to music and it felt like I’m in a movie – I probably was very influenced by my studies though. I have to stop talking about Vienna; it seems like another whole blog post.

Singapore
It feels like yesterday that I lived in Singapore but I left the city/country over a year ago now. Time is flying so fast! I moved there in June 2013 with my boyfriend. His new job gave us the opportunity of a little adventure. I also quickly found a job after arriving in the biggest haze ever. What a good start! Singapore was obviously so different from any European city but the rumours were true: it was the cleanest city and it felt like the safest city in the world. Life in Singapore was very hectic, long hours of work but at the same time I have never traveled that much in my life. At least once a month we flew somewhere in Southeast Asia and explored the other end of the world. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity.

London
It’s the second time I live in London now. I already lived in London for almost two years before we decided to move to Singapore. It’s almost a year I live in this city again. Is it lame to repeat myself?! Time is flying! You probably guessed, London is one of my favourite cities. It’s so vibrant; there is always something to do. It’s a curious city like me. I want to change all the time (in a good way) and never stand still. People appreciate being outside even if the weather is not the best. I love their attitude, it’s contagious. I came to London in September 2011 and started to look for a job. Once I started working in social media I completely fell in love with the city and so far I’m still here.

Back to my art work. I wanted to reflect a little of my different stories in the art work. What do you think? Do you want to know more about the different cities I have lived in?

x

Found The Perfect Business Cards

Sunday, March 29th, 2015

I love researching business cards designs and since I started my blog I was sure I wanted to print new business cards. So I got some nice inspiration from Pinterest and started designing.

In my opinion a business card has to reflect your personality. Whenever someone gives me their business card I’d say I can see their character a little bit. Of course, I’m not talking about work business cards – unless it’s their own business – because that reflects the company’s ‘personality’. I find it super interesting to see what images or illustrations someone uses. It’s not the first time I printed business cards – with MOO by the way (love them) – but it’s the first time I designed my own card. I used Photoshop and luckily my boyfriend showed me some tricks.

I’m a big fan of images showing stars. It’s so magical. What a privilege that in our time we can see these little wonders and I’m glad that there are fantastic photographers capturing the fascinations of nature. To go a little back to earth again but still high up I also love clouds and that’s how the background was formed. I do show a little bit of myself in some of the triangles because I think that makes the business card quite unique and people will remember my face when they look at the business card again. It’s just very practical for the future.

If you want to design your own business cards and need some inspiration here are some cool business cards I found on the Internet.

What do you think of my designed business cards? I’d love your feedback!

x

Found Another Mission – No.2 Breakfast Before Work

Saturday, March 28th, 2015

Okay, you probably think now ‘I’m eating breakfast before work every morning’ but that’s not what I mean. I mean getting up an hour early to meet up with a friend and going for breakfast. I did it and I loved it so much. I didn’t care about getting up earlier because I was excited to catch up with my friend and having a nice coffee and breakfast. I was planning this for a while but as you can imagine it’s difficult to find someone who would try it out; the thought of getting up earlier in the morning horrifies a lot of people. But here I am to tell you DO IT! It’s different. The day feels longer and starting with an amazing breakfast just tells me the day have to be good (am I exaggerating now?!).

Of course, it’s impossible and super expensive to do it every day but what about once a month? I just found I had so much more energy that day and was overall happier.

The whole purpose of those little missions I’m introducing you to is to do something different. It happens so easily that you find yourself in a daily and weekly routine which is difficult to break out sometimes. And then your creativity suffers. I’m talking about experience in this field here. I get stuck in doing the same things over and over again and then I get frustrated. But I hope with my little missions there won’t be frustration anymore.

Check out mission #1 when I went to explore nature. I’ll do it again with the wonderful team of Creative Retreats. It’ll be a weekend with lots of creative people. We’ll wander, we’ll talk, we’ll create and most important we’ll have time to think. I’ll make sure to tell you all about it on my blog end of April.

What would your ‘break out of routine’ advice be?

x

Found Ken Robinson’s Book Out Of Our Minds

Thursday, March 26th, 2015

It’s a while ago that I read Ken Robinson’s book Out Of Our Minds but I still remember its spirit and message. I actually want to read it again so I can absorb every detail afresh and feel the limitless inspiration. Ken Robinson is not an unknown character. He communicates his mission about bringing more creativity into the school system and is not only a writer but an excellent speaker. You can listen to some of his talks on TED. When I read his book Our Of Our Minds I had to think about my time at school at lot. It made me a little angry because I could clearly see what a ‘bad’ system it was, how some teachers didn’t give a sh… and how uninspiring the lessons were although the content wasn’t even that bad – history can be fun, trust me. Anyways, this blog post should not be a criticism of the school system but rather an enthusiastic recommendation of a great book. Let yourself be inspired by a little passage of the book.

Imagination is the source of our creativity, but imagination and creativity are not the same thing. Imagination is the ability to bring to mind things that are not present to our senses. We can imagine things that exist or things that do not exist at all. If I ask you to think of an elephant, your old school, or your best friend you can bring to mind mental images that are drawn from real experience. We wouldn’t normally think of mental images of real experiences as imaginative. More accurately, they are imaginal. If I ask you to think of a green polar bear wearing a dress, you can imagine that too. But now you’re bringing to mind something you haven’t experienced; at least I assume not. These sorts of images are of possibilities composed in the mind rather than recalled to mind. They are imaginative. Sometimes we mistake imaginative experiences for real ones. These sorts of experience are imaginary. Imagination includes imaginal, imaginative and imaginary thoughts.

As I probably mentioned before, I’m a big fan of psychological and motivational books. I previously introduced Creative Confidence if want to check it out.

Have you already heard about the book Out Of Our Minds? Are there any similar books I should read?

x

Found Happiness At The Creative Spring Project Event

Tuesday, March 24th, 2015

I’m so happy the Spring Project was such a success. If you don’t know anything about it check out my previous post Found You? Participate In The Spring Project. The event started last Saturday at 10am at The Proud Archivist in London. Although it was an overall success, no one showed up at 10am in the morning. At the beginning it was just me, my friend Maxine from 100days100letters and my boyfriend Chris who was so kind to help with taking pictures – he also ended up making a lot of flowers by the way; such a creative talent. I think the first person who appeared was at 11am and most of the people came at 12pm. We learned that most people (in this case ALL of them) want to sleep in at the weekend. Fair enough!

Once people arrived it was so much fun. I think we were around 15 people; all of them brought crepe or tissue paper and twigs. I showed them how to make paper flowers but quickly everyone used their own imagination and creativity and created unique flowers. We even had Origami birds, spirals, and paper planes. Creativity had no limit!

We got a lot of positive feedback. It made me so happy – and that’s why I think it was such a success – that people were surprised and delighted by their own creativity. The idea sounded nice when they first heard about the creative event but when they started making things they realized how fulfilling it was. The event was a great mixture of creating, mingling and helping each other. There was an amazing vibe amongst the group and we really spread some spring happiness that day. Thanks to all participants!

If you want to see more of the event head over to the Facebook page where I posted all pictures from the Spring Project event. We had some stunning digital contributions which you can also find on the Facebook page.

What do you think? Would you participate in an art project like that?

x

Found A Spring Gift Swap: A Blogger Surprise Box

Sunday, March 22nd, 2015

I hope the blogger who will get this spring gift doesn’t read my blog post because I haven’t sent it yet…

What is it all about? A few weeks back I attended one of those Twitter chats where bloggers meet to talk about different topics (great chats by the way). I started an interesting conversation with a few bloggers and we were thinking it would be great if we can send each other little surprises to cheer us up in winter. We were so tired of the cold and the darkness outside. Adele, one of the chat participants, took the lead and came up with Blogger Gift Swap.

We sent out contact details and preferences to blogger Adele and she grouped teams together. I can’t reveal the name of my blogger yet otherwise she’ll know what she gets before I could send her this surprise box. She mentioned in her preferences she likes quotes, everything nails related and candles. Since I couldn’t decide which one I’d get her I decided to get everything. I hope she’ll like it.

I thought, maybe I should do a surprise box as a giveaway soon. I’ve been blogging for two months now and got such great feedback from other bloggers, it really keeps me going. Six months will come in no time and I think it’s time to give something back.

So, what do you think of the Spring Gift Swap and my surprise box?

x

Found Vallée Duhamel: A Very Short Film

Saturday, March 21st, 2015

Do you sometimes have the feeling you live in a strange world? Welcome to Vallée Duhamel’s A Very Short Film. For me it’s a perfect pictorialization (I swear I didn’t make up that word) of a strange world. I did notice that the colours are very similar to the art of Hsiao-Ron Cheng, which I introduced you to two weeks ago. I love when pastel and spring goes hand in hand…

Back to the video! It’s a short story about a girl in a yellow dress. Then you discover there are many short stories within the film about quite a few characters in the play. But why did it fascinate me so much? It’s not about the story after all.

The film is like a painting. You need to pay a bit attention and you discover more and more little things. Normally I’d look at a picture for a while to explore it; here I had to play the video over and over again. It’s pretty, it’s curious, it’s arty, it’s unexpected. I love it. I don’t want to analyse this too much because you might see and feel different things than I do.

I’d love to hear what you think about art like that. Please share your thoughts with me!

x

Found A Snapshot: A Dangerous Zebra

Wednesday, March 18th, 2015

Hahaha this photo! I just had to laugh when I found it in one of the folders on my laptop. I went to a festival in England for the first time in my life – that was in 2012 and I went to Bestival. It was a great time. Above you can see two of my German friends (the leopards) who I met in London. The theme was animals (who would have guessed?!) and I bought a few items which should highlight that I’m a zebra. But my friend did the magic and transformed my eye make-up into the most dangerous zebra at the festival. What do you think?

The three days at the Bestival were fantastic! We were so lucky with the weather. But it was new to me that there weren’t any showers, i.e. I didn’t shower for three days (OMG). I also discovered dry shampoo for the first time… I don’t know if you’re familiar with festivals but it was an amazing atmosphere. I met quite a few new people, I danced three days through and had a real life camping experience. You only had a problem when you wanted to go to the toilet in the morning but I better don’t talk about that…

Have you ever been to a festival? Which one is the best?

x

Found Excitement For Creative Project #3

Monday, March 16th, 2015

Do you remember my previous creative projects? If not have a look here:

I just started project number three. I really liked the first project where I had to transform the same image in 50 different ways. Project number two was alright but I lacked a bit of consistency and therefore this isn’t my favourite – but that was totally up to me, I was just not very satisfied with myself.

Project number three sounds super interesting and I have already started. If you’re new to my 2015 creative projects, I get all my inspiration from The Jealous Curator who wrote a book about 50 selected artists giving an interview and challenging other people with “little” tasks. This month’s task is from Kate Pugsley, a Chicago based artist and illustrator. She asked to get some watercolours and simply paint white paper in any colours you want. In step two you cut out any shape you can think of, e.g. trees, lips, raindrops etc. and put them together in your journal. In the picture above you can see a little glimpse of the colours I chose. I’ll update my blog with the results very soon so stay tuned!

Tell me a little bit about yourself. How do you keep yourself creatively active?

x

Found Another Nomination In My Inbox

Saturday, March 14th, 2015

I already told you how much I like answering questions. I was just recently thinking maybe I should write a personal blog post so I can tell you a bit more about myself and then I got this lovely nomination from Ceri Louise // October Eleven. Thank you very much for The Liebster Award Nomination!

Here are the eleven questions Ceri Louise asked me.

What was the last book you read?Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell – I have to add I love non-fiction books, especially about psychology and sociology

What TV shows have you watched ALL episodes of?
OMG here we go, the list is looooooong – I’m obsessed with series (my friends always ask me what to watch)
Dexter
The Good Wife
Scandal
Game of Thrones
How to get away with murder
Twin Peaks
The Walking Dead
Fringe
Okay, this is enough! If you need any more recommendations let me know.

Favourite beverage? (alcoholic or non-alcoholic)
Soda water with fresh lime (the alcohol version is with Vodka)

What would be the first thing you bought if you won the lottery?
Wow, THE big question. I want to buy a house and renovate it and decorate it. Small, isn’t it?!

When did you start blogging?
I started blogging a couple of years ago with several blogs – you can read my story in a previous blog post Found Some… Truth – but this blog I just started on 17th January 2015

Favourite season?
All of them. Since I lived in Singapore (hot hot hot) I appreciate the colder seasons too.

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wish I remembered. But I think I wanted to do something creative.

Do you have any pets? (If so, what?)
Not here in London but I grew up with my Persian cat Romeo, such a diva. I prefer dogs (don’t tell him).

Snow or beach holiday?
Beach!

Favourite cheese?
These questions are amazing! Or it makes me look I’m addicted to everything. I LOVE cheese! The smellier the better. Camembert is pretty awesome.

If you could apparate (that’s right) to anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?
Hawaii

What’s your favourite movie of all time?
When was the last time you sent a postcard or letter?
What’s your biggest achievement?
Who is your regular inspiration?
Which Instagram account should I follow?
What flowers would you send a friend?
What’s the best Pinterest board you followed and why?
Which app would you recommend except the usual social suspects?
If you compare yourself with a city which one would it be and why?
What’s your beauty secret?
Where in your home country should your friends travel to?

ME

Welcome to my blog! I'm glad you're here because this is the right place to get inspired. Together we can live a more creative life and discover the curious world of art and design.
I'm Uli & if you want to collaborate with me, send me an email at uli@foundsomepaper.com.